Propaganda

I've overshared here at times--especially the stories about the bad and/or slightly odd things I've done. I appreciate that your comments have generally let me off the hook, but I have decided I need to share some good things to help shore-up my image.

I couldn't think of anything!

But then I was reminded of something from when I was 16. It was a snowy day and schools closed early. In the confusion, lots of students missed their buses, including my girl friend and me. We had no choice but to walk home--and our homes were in opposite directions. After I'd made it a half-mile into my 3.5 mile (5.6 kilometer) walk, a friend stopped to offer a ride. I jumped in the car and asked if he could also give my girlfriend a ride home. When I told him where she lived, he said no, he didn't have enough gas to take us both home (most men are TERRIBLE at estimating how far they can make it on the gas in their tanks--never trust them). So I asked him to give her a ride.

We found her, took her home, and then he dropped me off back at school. From there I restarted my journey home.

So while maybe I wasn't always the best boyfriend {or was I, who's to say? ;) }, at least I knew how to be one when I needed to be. You might be thinking, "Why not be one all the time?" But how boring would that have been for a teenager??? I guess I couldn't have been too bad, she married me. LOL!


PS - Did I mention it was snowing? And I didn't have boots? And it was uphill? Both ways? (I know, I know, that's a BAD old joke)


Have a great weekend!

They'll just eat it!

I shared recently that I like to have my kids try different types of food. The next new thing could end up being their all-time favorite. (Note to self: try to stick to healthy and, more importantly, inexpensive items.) That's how caviar found its way into my shopping cart. My dad had a different theory about sharing new items with children.

"They'll just eat it." (Don't waste it on them.)

That confused me as a kid--made me wonder what HE was going to do with it. What else can you do with food??? (That's rhetorical, please don't answer.) When I got older, I realized he meant kids won't properly appreciate something "special".

In keeping with his theory, he often hid things to keep us from "just eating" them. And of course we knew all of his hiding places. Most of it was good stuff, nothing extravagant. But there was a weird psychology at work.

He liked something called horehound candy and hid it whenever he bought it. It was nasty. We knew it was nasty. But still we tried to sneak some on occasion. I remember making a face as I ate it, but still I ate it. Looking back, I'm not sure if that was because something was better than nothing or if it was simply that whatever he hid became desirable?

What do you think???

I don't like mentioning a blogger two posts in a row (it feels weird), but Tania's comment on my last post sparked the memory about my dad's theory. She wrote that if I paid $80 for caviar, the kids should pretend they LOVED it. LOL!


PS - Horehound candy is still available for sale--I think it's considered a cough drop. If you like it, well, everyone is different. I still don't like it. A friend gave me a bag last year as a joke. I decided to try it to see if my tastes had changed. I spit it out. Yuk!

Taste Test

I had my kids try caviar last weekend. As expected, they didn't like it. Too salty and too fishy for them.


But what's that on the other cracker?


You probably know it's Nutella. I love it on toast, but never thought to put it on a cracker before. But when I mentioned caviar and Nutella in my grocery store post, Tania (Bunnie Bar) commented that the combination was classy and fabulous. I thought, "Challenge accepted!" and decided to try them together on a cracker.


I added a spotlight to make sure you could see there really is black caviar on top of that little mound of chocolaty, hazelnut goodness. How was it?


Believe it or not, it was good. The Nutella neutralized the fishiness, making it a salty-chocolate-hazelnut snack. Since the grocery store variety of caviar was $80 a pound, I think I'll simply use table salt if I ever want salty Nutella again. Of course, the caviar would seem less expensive in countries using the metric system. $80 for 450 grams? Sounds like a bargain to me (since, as a patriotic American, I know nothing about the metric system).

Hope you're having a great weekend!

Will The Real Nashe Please Stand Up

Blogspot sends me e-mails when readers are kind enough to leave a comment. I'm bad at e-mail management, so I have more than a few accumulated. The e-mails show the names of the commentors. But now almost all of them say they are from Nashe! It happened first with a comment from Lisa and then *BAM* the old messages (that used to show the correct names) said they're from Nashe too.

According to those notification e-mails, the only bloggers I know (aside from Nashe) are Julie, Lei, Mel, Krissy, and Bessie.

Did I just imagine the rest of you?

This glitch plays into one of my sillier thoughts--that everyone on the web except me is really just one person (an unemployed 42 year-old guy) who lives only to play different characters on-line. LOL!


PS - If I'm actually in a feeding pod and reality is the Matrix controlled by Nashe, thank you for creating wonderful imaginary friends for me. But, for goodness sakes, couldn't at least ONE of them be a relative? Did you have to plant me into such a weird (and not in a good way) family??? ;P

"First They Came..."

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

--Martin Niemöller

We've had a rash of hate crimes in DC. A black teenager got shot in Florida for walking along a road. I could go on. I want to think these are isolated incidents, committed by a vanishing breed of morons. But then I hear extremely divisive rhetoric from our (supposed) politcal leaders and I worry.

If life, liberty and pursuit of happiness can be denied to some, it can be denied to all.

Let's stand together!

Strange Grocery Trip

Like most people, I often have to stop at the grocery store after work. Tuesday we needed toilet paper. There's nothing unusual about that. In fact, we seem to always need it. I used to worry the kids ate it, but the consequences of that would have shown up by now. I think. What are the consequences???

Anyway, what made this a strange trip is the single other item I decided to buy. Something on the end of an aisle caught my eye and I added it to the cart. Product placement works.

My son greeted me at the door when I got home and asked what I had in the bag. I told him I bought toilet paper and caviar. And then we both started laughing. I'm not 100% sure why. It just sounded funny.

The caviar is sure to be awful--it's from a grocery store! But I like to buy different things to (force) let the kids try. This week it's caviar. It probably won't be as well received as the week I brought home Nutella. =)

A Pretty Good Day

Another birthday bites the dust, but it was a good one. I watched a St. Patty's Day parade, tried mascarpone cheese and Irish butter for the first time, tried out a local shooting range, and ate too much. Lunch was just a quick stop at Arby's--the family hates it, but it's next door to Dairy Queen and their Butterfinger Blizzards. Dinner was a longer affair, at my favorite crab cake (blue crab) restaurant.

To finish the day, I indulged my Irish heritage and watched Darby O'Gill and the Little People. It's an essentially forgotten Disney film about a crafty man's dealings with King Brian, leader of the leprechauns. At one point, King Brian appears as a beautiful bunnie (is there any other kind???). The film stars a very young Sean Connery--who sings in the movie. Here are a few lyrics:

Oh, she's my dear, my darlin' one
Her eyes so sparklin' full of fun
No other, no other
Can match the likes of her

She's my dear, my darlin' one
My smilin' and beguilin' one
I love the ground she walks upon
My pretty Irish girl

If you like the idea of believing in leprechauns, you might like the movie--or if you're a Connery fan. The special effects are pretty cool (for a movie made in 1959). The Lord of the Rings used the same camera tricks (in 2001) to make the Hobbits look small. I liked it and, with King Brian's help, now I know how to avoid trouble caused by the wail of the banshee.

Spears (not Britany)

I've got to learn to keep quiet! But since I haven't, I'm going to share a story. Last night my daughter was watching something on tv and she commented it was dangerous that the kids in the show were throwing things at each other. I laughed and told her my friends and I used to throw spears at each other. She nearly choked and said something about it being uncivilized. So I explained.

They weren't exactly spears. One fall my friends and I discovered really tall, reed-like weeds that had grown perfectly straight, rigid, and strong (they'd dried out after the first frost). One of us (doesn't matter who ;P) pulled one of the weeds and realized its root formed sort of an arrowhead and that it was perfectly weighted for throwing. Soon we were all armed with our "spears" and for the next month or so we battled each other whenever we had time to play. If you were outside, you had to carry a few spears with you because you never knew when someone might ambush you. You could be walking down the road or the train tracks and just out of the blue you'd see a spear flying towards you--if you were lucky. If you weren't lucky, you felt it before seeing it. They weren't sharp, but did carry a nice pop. Also, we quickly learned the importance of retrieving thrown spears (your's and your opponent's) so we wouldn't be left defenseless.

I guess that wasn't the most civilized activity, but we were 11 and it was fun--and it was much safer than our slingshot battles.

I'm thinking my next story needs to be one that shines a more favorable light on my youth. I'm drawing a blank, but it probably won't be about my shillelagh--even though St. Patrick's Day IS right around the corner. =)

"Look into my eyes and I'll own you"

That's a line from a song I like--Moves Like Jagger. I enjoy the song, but can't sing it because it makes me laugh. For one thing, it's perfectly safe to look into my eyes. Second, I DON'T have moves like Jagger. That guy moved like a rooster and I've never moved that way. I patterned my dance moves after a different animal, the star of "Caddyshack" (the gopher). At the end of the movie he does a little "gopher twist". That's my signature move. =)

Why does it matter what I can sing? Because I'm practicing. I made a commitment to sing on my blog and I'm going to keep it. The problem is the more I practice, the worse I sound. Also, in an attempt to protect your ears, my subconcious gives me a cold every time I get close to recording. So I'm going to take a break, no more practice, and then one day, just out of the blue I'll record something. It will be horrible, but hopefully funny horrible.

Hope your week is off to a good start--I spent my Monday getting a root canal and then waiting in line at the DMV to renew my driver's license.